


A Rose by Any Other Name

by Theri



Category: Code Vein (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Dominic needs some help y'all, F/M, Female Protagonist, Female Queenslayer, In this house we love Louis, Mental Health Issues, Multi, No beta we die like Oliver, Non-Graphic Smut, no this is not a reverse harem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24655576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theri/pseuds/Theri
Summary: Even before she had amnesia, the Queenslayer had no name. As far as she was concerned, she had never been human at all. She was born to fight and die on the battlefield, over and over again until the world saw it fit to finally relieve her of her duties. Too many revenants were swallowed up in the fruitless pursuit of the pasts they had lost.
Relationships: Louis/Protagonist (Code Vein), Protagonist/Dominic (Code Vein), Protagonist/Jack Rutherford, Protagonist/Shang (Code Vein)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	A Rose by Any Other Name

She did not remember her name, even before the amnesia. Whatever life the Queenslayer had lived as a human had slipped out of her grasp like grains of sand in the wind. She woke up alongside dozens of other revenants, so no one had paid her any particular mind. No one even realized she didn’t have a name. Wrapped around the metal bars making up the footboard was a tag. Just a number; every bed had one. #257.

Her superiors tried to remember everyone’s name, for the most part. Maybe it was a vestige of being human. A sentimentality that they no longer had need of, yet still fought desperately to keep. The broad-shouldered man she told her name was 257 to shook his head. “Numbers aren’t names, lassie.” But he didn’t push the subject. A few days later, he was turned to ash in front of her eyes by exploding shrapnel from a bomb thrown by a Lost.

She told her next superior her name was Lassie.

The Queenslayer did not think of herself as sentimental, unlike those around her. The battlefield changed, as did the scenery, but the revenants didn’t. She saw their names carved into the walls, the sand, the snow. Lila Harkins. Steven Jasper. Wendy Wickstrom. Corbin Whitaker. The lists went on and on, the names on them belonging to piles of ash or Lost, no doubt. She wondered what she would write when her turn finally came. 

Wendy. Raven. Noir. Ellie. Monika. She went through dozens, yet none felt right. Each time she dispersed, she picked a new one upon waking. When others called for her, it felt like they were speaking to someone else. They _were_ speaking to someone else; those names were stolen. Even if she knew her name from when she was human, it still probably wouldn’t feel right. As far as the Queenslayer was concerned, she had never been human at all. She was born to fight and die on the battlefield, over and over again until the world saw it fit to finally relieve her of her duties. Too many revenants were swallowed up in the fruitless pursuit of the pasts they had lost.

So it wasn’t a surprise when some of the people at camp began to shun her. Their way of bonding was sharing their grief with one another. Reminiscing about who they used to be or who they used to know. Some of them even had human families in Vein. As far as the Queenslayer was concerned, she had always been this way. And she could not understand the pain of having forgotten something important.

Oddly enough, her first friend was a human. Or at least, he claimed to be so. But she could smell a human, and Dominic definitely wasn’t one. Not to mention the purifier mask he wore. She definitely wasn’t going to tell him otherwise, though. The last and only time she did, he got angry and pulled up his sleeve to show her his arm. “Look, I’m telling you I’m a human! They even draw blood from me like everyone else!” Band-aids covered the spots where a needle would’ve punctured his vein to draw blood. She almost believed him for a while--until she stumbled upon him jabbing needles in his median cubital vein one day in an abandoned building. But regardless of whether Dominic was a human or revenant, they were still friends for a brief spell. They were both outsiders.

And because they were friends, she tried to fix him. She called it a reset. She plunged her sword into his chest and yanked it out, causing his body to fade into mist. Perhaps once he woke up, he would forget all about thinking he was human. But the Dominic that woke up on the cot was just as broken as before. He may not have remembered meeting her, but he was just as convinced that he was human. He was not a revenant, but rather a human who had been injured but woke up. So the Queenslayer knew to let sleeping dogs lie and kept her distance.

The revenants didn’t hate her like they hated Dominic. Dominic was crazy in a way that you couldn’t really ignore. Meanwhile, they just ignored the Queenslayer because she was quiet. It was easy to pretend she didn’t exist. Newly-awoken revenants approached her often, but it never took very long for them to realize she was in the wrong crowd to hang with. Besides, she was just as unnerving as Dominic--it just took a closer look to see. The Queenslayer’s eyes sparkled like jewels, yet in their depths lay a placid, empty darkness. The sort of absence that only came from having absolutely nothing to call your own.

* * *

“Your eyes remind me of the old world,” a smooth, male voice once purred.

She angled her head to look at a revenant of average height. His hair was parted messily to the right (his left) and his smirk made something in her stomach pitch. He offered her a gloved hand and she shook it. She replied that he was one to talk. His eyes were a startling blue she’d only ever seen in pictures before the Great Collapse. Sepia-toned skin that reminded her of lacquered wood outlined his modest muscles.

His name was Shang--just Shang, no last name--and he was a merchant. He asked for hers and she said Jordan. No last name.

He whistled. “Well, Jordan Nolastname, by the looks of you you’re a member of Operation Queenslayer.”

She offered a laugh before explaining that she was on reconnaissance. He took her hand and offered to let her spend the night at his hideout, and she did. That night he asked, “Are you a virgin?”

The Queenslayer didn’t answer. She didn’t know. But she let him fuck her and moan out someone else’s name that held no meaning as she reciprocated in silence. His question held no meaning. Things like “virginity” weren’t a part of the equation in this life. That was something humans had the luxury of worrying about. She liked Shang, but his fixation on the way things used to be done wasn’t of interest to her at all. Even so, she kept coming back. She kept coming back, night after night, until she happened to glimpse a small, gold ring sitting on a desk in the corner. _Jordan_ was inscribed in cursive. She looked at it for several moments. Even knowing what she was looking at, she felt nothing. No joy. No sadness. Just the usual emptiness.

“Do you want it?” Shang asked.

She turned around and looked at him. Then she looked down at the ring. Then back at him.

He smiled softly, his eyes crinkling together. She didn’t need to say a word; he already knew. “I figured as much. You know, your eyes never changed. I thought…maybe I could bring some light into them. Make them sparkle like I know they can. But they never did.”

She didn’t even bid him goodbye. She just left to go back to the front lines. When she woke again after dispersing, a woman named Karen greeted her. She was sent back out and assigned to a squad under a man named Jack Rutherford. She liked Jack. In fact, he was the first revenant she actively liked. Dominic she gravitated towards due to their similar positions, while Shang was handsome and liked her.

Jack was different. He never asked her for a name, never forced conversation, and looked out for her with the mutual expectation that she do so for him. To him, she was just “you” or “kid,” even though they were definitely around the same age. He understood exactly what she wanted to convey with just a look or tilt of her head. Their teamwork was so flawless it was like one person. And during the nights when they would camp by a mistle, they took silent comfort in each other’s presence. 

The Queenslayer was made of stone, but Jack Rutherford was made of steel. Both were tough, but he could break her. It was gradual, but she could feel herself wearing down bit by bit. His features were narrow and hard, different from Shang’s yet handsome nonetheless. A cold glance from him could make her shiver. Progress from the base camp to the last reported whereabouts of the Queen was slow, stymied by groups of strong Lost and many crevices that led to certain death. Time wasn’t something she took care to keep track of, but it’d been at least a month.

She almost kissed him once. Almost. But then they both remembered that they were in an unsanitary abandoned building in the middle of a battlefield with monsters prowling about and they were expected to die at any moment. Secretly, she wasn’t sure if she crossed that line--if she gave into her desires--that she would be able to bear dispersing into mist and forgetting about him. The distance that other revenants shunned her for--it was her only defense. So in hindsight, it was fortunate she didn’t; it hurt less when he killed her without a second thought.

When she woke up, everything had been a mind-numbing blank. The girl in her dream…she had looked so familiar. She’d asked her name, right? But the Queenslayer could not remember what she had said. It wasn’t like she had time to mull it over; revenants had captured her and the white-haired girl who had woken with her.

The broad-shouldered redhead she was paired up with introduced himself as Oliver Collins. “And you are?” he asked.

She thought it over for a moment, her head aching as she recalled the vivid flashback from earlier. That haunted-looking shell of a girl she could not recognize. _Queen…._ She told him to call her Queenslayer.

Oliver’s tone was slightly disappointed as he said, “All right…Queenslayer,” but she felt a strange sense of fulfillment at hearing the word from his lips. Like it belonged to her and no one else.

For someone she had only just met, Oliver was kind and affectionate. Some might even say he overstepped certain boundaries. The Queenslayer said nothing as she went along with his whims. Something about this pattern of behavior was familiar. Like she was a reed bending in whichever direction the wind tugged her. Oliver liked and desired her, so she made no effort to distance herself from his advances. 

He panted as he violently shoved away another Lost, toppling it over an edge and down into the mysterious depths below. He wiped his brow as he turned towards her. “I know we only just met, but I’d really like to know your name. You can tell me; I won’t go and tell anyone.”

She shook her head and repeated that her name was Queenslayer. She didn’t remember anything else.

“Hmm, then you should have a real name. What about…Robin?”

She pursed her lips in disagreement, but before they could continue, another group of Lost appeared. The Queenslayer hacked her way through them in no time. She showed her back to the redhead as she walked forward, letting him know that this conversation was off limits. Sure he was pushy, but at least he wanted her around. As he urged her to go on without her, she felt a familiar--yet at the same time foreign--pain in her heart. 

Progress without Oliver was agonizing, but eventually she managed to make it to another mistle. Shortly after, she happened across a dark-haired figure in the dimness of the cavern. He introduced himself as Louis and she told him her name was Queenslayer. He paused awkwardly for a moment (she couldn’t see his expression) before verbalizing his affirmation. 

He talked less than Oliver, which was a relief. Something deep inside the Queenslayer told her she knew people quieter, but it hurt too much to think about--both in her heart and her head. In the daylight, she noticed he was handsome. Quite so. The handsomest man she’d ever seen--which admittedly, so far, wasn’t a title deeply contested. 

“There isn’t anything you can do now except put him out of his misery,” he said, angling his sword up in preparation for battle. “Do not hesitate.”

Again, there was a familiarity in her actions, but she cut him down all the same. On the ground was her white-haired friend from before. The girl stirred, blinking golden eyes languidly up at her. “...Queenslayer?” In the corner of her vision, she saw Louis wince.

* * *

He rarely spoke her name if he could help it. She’d heard it escape his lips only a handful of times, half of which he tripped his tongue over the syllables. Nobody else had that reaction. Even when she found out the truth of his past, she knew she couldn’t change it. She was the Queenslayer; that title belonged to her. Even if that meant Louis would resent her until the end of time for taking Cruz away from him.

It was okay that she was the odd one out. True, sometimes she wondered what would’ve happened had Jack not “killed” her. Would she have taken Eva’s place at his side? Everyone around her had someone irrevocably tied to them. Louis had Cruz; Yakumo had Emily; Mia had Nicola; Davis had Jessica; Jack had Eva. The Queenslayer had nothing, but that was okay. She could’ve had something if she wanted to.

Shang recognized her; she knew from the first moment they met that he’d known her before. Dominic didn’t. It made sense, since she’d plunged the cold steel of her blade into him ages ago. She wasn’t sure if Silva truly had confided in him or if that was just another one of his delusions. Of course, she only understood these facts after she had defeated the Argent Wolf Berserker and delved into her own memories. Shang recognized her and she recognized him, but the Queenslayer did not acknowledge it. Because she finally understood how he felt those years ago when he offered that ring to her. That shimmering depth to his narrow, blue gaze.

She’d seen it in the mirror once out of the corner of her eye when she was looking at Louis. Somehow she’d turned into the person she always wanted to be without even realizing it. Jack may not have confined her to a name, but Louis accepted the one she had even when it bothered him. Even when…it made him loathe her.

In the fading light of the sunset out on the crumbling stone balcony, the two sat side by side. The Queenslayer and the Crimson Sword. He cleared his throat as he began to speak. “Queen….” The remainder of her name died in his throat as he looked down at his lap.

She asked if her name bothered him and he didn’t immediately reply. Finally, he sighed as he looked over at her. They had done it all. She’d saved the other Successors, including his own sister, at the cost of Io’s life. They had permanently stopped the Queen and ensured the stability of life for revenants. But even after all that, there was no salvation to be found for Cruz. She was still dead. And her blood was still on the Queenslayer’s hands.

Louis shook his head. “I know you go by Queenslayer, and I don’t want to pretend you don’t.” He offered a tiny smile. “But Queenslayer is a bit of a mouthful, so if it’s okay, would you mind if I called you Queenie?” 

She paused a moment before nodding. A quiet warmth enveloped her right hand as Louis slowly, shyly, grasped it with his left, the both of them still looking out at the sunset. For the first time ever, both the Queenslayer and Queenie smiled. Queenie’s voice was quiet as she pushed out a few select words, still in faint shock that he didn’t despise her. “Louis, I love you.”

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, his voice beginning to crack. “Yeah, I know. You don’t have to say it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this might sound like too much but no filter I would suck Louis's dick dry. That's it; that's all I need to say. Also congrats to me for writing about characters that literally aren't focused on in any other CV fic.


End file.
